Rishi Sunak calls for tough talks with health officials to resolve NHS crisis

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Rishi Sunak will hold pivotal talks with health officials in Downing Street on Saturday in a bid to resolve the crisis engulfing the NHS.

More 'a quarter of ambulance patients waited more than an hour to be admitted to A&E last week as hospitals face one of their toughest winters in history, exacerbated by a heavy flu season , a spike in Covid cases and staff and bed shortages.

< p>And young doctors have now threatened to strike for three straight days in March, which would leave emergency services short of tens of thousands of staff.

The Prime Minister is to call a meeting of the 'best minds', including NHS bosses, senior doctors and private providers, to try to tackle the chaos .

The summit will focus on the emergency care crisis, which doctors say ins, contributes to up to 500 deaths a week, and in social care, where lack of benefits causes a bottleneck for hospitals awaiting discharge patients.

The ghost secretary at Health Wes Streeting questioned why Mr Sunak had taken so long to act, commenting that "patients deserve more than a talk shop".

The proposed 72-hour walkout by young people doctors would be the latest escalation in a series of labor disputes between health service personnel and the government. Health officials have called on the government to meet with union leaders in a bid to avoid further disruption.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said it would vote on Monday with its 45,000 young doctors on whether to take industrial action. Young doctors have suffered a pay cut in real terms of more than a quarter over the past 15 years, which, combined with difficult working conditions, has caused them to leave the profession in droves.

“Wage erosion, burnout and desperation are forcing young doctors out of the NHS, pushing waiting lists even higher as patients suffer unnecessarily,” said co-chairs Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, in a statement: "The government's refusal to reverse 15 years of salary erosion has left young doctors with no choice but to vote for industria...